CARL DJERASSI
1923-2015
The Stanford chemist was a key contributor to the invention of the birth control pill, forever changing the lives of modern women.
By Erin Allday and Carolyne Zinko
Carl Djerassi, a Stanford chemist who was a key contributor to the invention of the birth control pill, which forever changed the lives of modern women, died Friday of complications of cancer at his home in San Francisco. He was 91.
Mr. Djerassi, who was working up until his death, was best known for his contribution to the first oral contraceptive, and he wrote two books on the subject and three autobiographies. Later in his career, he turned to writing novels and plays, with an emphasis on mixing science and literature, and he considered himself a chemist, teacher, writer, art collector and philanthropist.
A longtime Bay Area resident, he also was known for his collection of Paul Klee artworks, which he donated to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and for the Djerassi Resident Artists Program,
which he founded in Woodside in memory of his artist daughter, who committed suicide in 1978. Both his collection and the free residency program were paid for in large part by stock earnings from the company that made the pill.
“Carl did many things in his life — he was a true Renaissance man and scholar,” said Dr. Philip Darney, a contraceptive scientist and director of UCSF’s Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health.
Mr. Djerassi and two other scientists are credited for developing norethindrone, a synthetic molecule with effects similar to the hormone progesterone, which was a key component of the first birth control pill in 1952. For his work, Mr. Djerassi received a National Medal of Science, a presidential award that’s been bestowed on fewer than 500 scientists since it was established in 1959, and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
The Pill was approved by the Food and Drug Administration eight years after its development, just in time for it to take off during the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the women’s movement. In the decades since, the Pill has been reformulated dozens of times, and it’s the most popular form of birth control in the United States, used by more than 10 million women.
Mr. Djerassi was not humble about his role in the invention. He wrote three autobiographies, including “The Pill, Pygmy Chimps and Degas’ Horse,” “In Retrospect: From the Pill to the Pen,” and, on the 50th anniversary of oral contraception, released a book called “This Man’s Pill,” but his immodesty was well-earned, said col- leagues and peers.
Mr. Djerassi had a compelling and lifelong interest, both as a scientist and as an artist, in issues of “individual agency,” and he took pride in the social and cultural shifts that were brought on by the Pill, said Darney. He got to know Mr. Djerassi well during the 1980s, when they worked to bring RU-486 — a drug now called mifepristone that is used to terminate pregnancies — to the United States.
“Carl was interested particularly in individual freedom and self-determination, and believed that all of us, women included, should have that opportunity,” Darney said. “He saw birth control and access to abortion as agents of that opportunity.”
Mr. Djerassi was born to Jewish parents in Vienna, Austria, in 1923 and raised there and in Bulgaria. He arrived in the United States with his mother in 1939 after fleeing the Nazis, and receved degrees in chemistry from Kenyon College in Ohio and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he earned a doctorate at age 21.
He was working at pharmaceutical company Syntex in Mexico City when he developed the birth control molecule, and he continued to hold posts at the company through 1972. He moved to the Bay Area, where he joined the Stanford faculty, in 1959.
Aside from his contributions to the Pill, Mr. Djerassi was known among chemists for his work with antihistamines and topical corticosteroids, and for his interest in applying computer modeling and measurement techniques to the field of organic chemistry. He also won the National Medal of Technology for his work in insect control at Zoecon, a company he founded in Palo Alto.
But his career branched beyond chemistry, and in the 1990s he published a stream of novels, plays and poetry collections, most dealing with the role of science in fiction or science in theater. His first novel, “Cantor’s Dilemma,” told of the intense pressure and competition in the lab of a scientist on the brink of academic stardom.
“People have asked over the years, ‘What’s it been like to have Carl Djerassi as a father?’ ” said his son, filmmaker Dale Djerassi. “My an- swer is: He was both a hugely interesting person and a hugely interested person, and I have been a huge beneficiary of both of those things.”
Mr. Djerassi married three times and had two children. A first marriage, after college, was brief. He was also married to Norma Lundholm, the mother of his two children, who died in 2006. His third wife, Stanford English professor and biographer Diane Middlebrook, died in 2007 after 22 years of marriage.
In addition to his son, he is survived by a stepdaughter, Leah Middlebrook of Eugene, Ore., and a grandson, Alexander Maxwell Djerassi, of New Haven, Conn.
A memorial service is pending. Contributions may be made to the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, 2325 Bear Gulch Road, Woodside, CA 94062. More information is available at www.djerassi.org.
“Carl was interested particularly in individual freedom and self-determination, and believed that all of us, women included, should have that opportunity.” Dr. Philip Darney, director, UCSF’s Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health